I have embarked on a major spring cleaning in my little apartment. Even though I was passed over for other prospective tenants for the seniors' building I am on the wait list for, I am confident that my name will come up again sooner than later. The timing in this instance was very inconvenient. When I received an email about the availability of a unit it was for March 1 and it was already February 7 when I got notification. It turns out that they tried to phone me using the incomplete contact information in our church directory (the building is owned by my church) I subscribe to a voice mail service for low income people. For only twenty-five dollars a year I have my own voice mailbox and one has only to call this service, key in my four digit number and Bob's Yer Uncle, which is one of my favourite little expressions. It apparently hales from England during the late Victorian Era when the prime minister's nephew, (the prime-minister's name was Robert Something) was given a very plum position in Parliament, from whence sprang the saying for when everything happens so easily and quickly, "Bob's Your Uncle."
Somehow I had forgotten or neglected to include this information or the individual compiling the information had somehow left out my mailbox number. It might have been intentional on my part because when I was included in the church directory a few years ago I was less than enchanted with a lot of the people there and even in the remote circumstance of anyone wanting to call me I still probably would not have welcomed them. So omitting my mailbox number just might have been my own passive aggressive manoeuvre though who can know for certain?
So, assuming that they will call me again, sooner or later about an apartment in this building, I want to be ready to move, so I am already getting my ducks together, going through my closet (all finished now) and after that, various cupboards and drawers and maybe even my library to see if I should cull it some more. Three weeks notice was not enough to get ready to move. I am preparing for my annual vacation to Mexico and I will be there for the entire month of March. I am also going through a very busy and at times stressful period at work. I really don't have time to get ready to move right now.
As often happens while spring cleaning, I've come across some of my old journals. I have been reading some of the entries from 1998 and 1997, sixteen and seventeen years ago. I was not doing very well then and just seeing how much I was constantly repeating myself and going on and on about the same issues and people I was bothered about like a dog snapping at its fleas I don't really feel a lot in common with the person writing these rants. I can honestly say that I have forgiven all those people who had troubled me and I hope they have found it in their hearts to forgive me. I can also tell by the tone of my writing that I really wasn't emotionally well then. Really, I no longer write a journal because I seem to have resolved a lot of the critical issues that made journal writing a necessary but ineffective way of coping. I much prefer writing this blog instead. I leave out personal and juicy details, not that they even exist these days, but I'm not complaining and I certainly don't miss them, but it just seems much better and more constructive to write things that I can share with the public, written in a way that will not come back to haunt me or bite me in the heiny.
I think I'm going to save the journals. Revisiting them from time to time is educational. It helps me remember more accurately where I have been, how far I have come, and how much further I have still to go. It is also a helpful way of recognizing patterns and to help me devise ways of breaking out of them before I become dangerously trapped. It also fills me with a sense of hope and gratitude because I can see now that I am indeed in a much better place than before and my life is not the dead end that it appeared to be in those days. In other ways it tells me also how much I haven't changed, that I am still the same person. I have the same values. I also had to accept and recognize that I was ill and needed treatment. Journal writing was helpful up to a point but I kept going around in the same circle and after a while the exercise became counter-productive. Four years of seeing a good therapist who provided me talk therapy without medications seemed to help break me out of these patterns and vicious circles.
On top of everything else, I feel a lot happier now. I mentioned to a friend the other day that a major factor in my recovery from PTSD was recognizing and accepting that I am fundamentally a joyful and happy person. Every since embracing this it all seems to be better, much better. And it is much easier now to laugh, especially at myself.
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